Her first space trip - and not just to Venus but to Terra as well that most improbable of planets. It was a place where the natives had to go wrapped and protected against their own environment, a place where the gravity was too powerful for her species. Yet, according to one school of history, Terra was where humans like her had had their origins. But now the Mars shuttle was waiting to take her on her great adventure.

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And if it were anybody but Heinlein, I'd say the hell with it.All right, look -- between 1959 and 1964 Heinlein wrote what I regard as his three _preachiest_ books: _Starship Troopers_, _Farnham's Freehold_, and this one. _Troopers_ and _Farnham_, whatever their flaws (and I think _Farnham_ is a much, much worse book than _Troopers_), were about subjects in which Heinlein had some expertise -- respectively, military service and surviving a nuclear attack. But Heinlein was never a _parent_ anywhere but in his dreams.And yet -- in this sorta-juvenile novel ostensibly about young Podkayne Fries of Mars but actually, albeit indirectly, about her younger brother Clark -- there he is up on his soapbox, blaming Mom for not staying home with the kids. _That_, y'see, is why the terrible thing happens to Poddy at the end, and why Clarkie is turning out to be such a sociopath: their mother was just too busy with her _career_. (As an engineer.)_Which_ terrible thing happens to Poddy depends on which ending you read. As Heinlein originally wrote it, she died; as he _re_wrote it (at Putnam's behest), she was merely comatose, with every hope of recovery. In the most recent PB edition of the novel, both ending are included, along with a bunch of comments/votes from readers who had much stronger feelings about the matter than I do.Call me an ol' sourpuss, but I don't even especially _like_ Poddy. She's sorta cute in a late-50s kiddie-lit way, but the folks who say this book is dated are entirely right. Frankly, I don't really care one way or the other about the ending.Not that there isn't any good stuff in this book at all. The plot's okay, and Clark really doesn't strike me as all that terrible a kid (he certainly isn't any worse than young Woodie Smith).Read more ›

Even though this is possibly the worst juvenile sci fi novel about a girl EVER WRITTEN, I feel I had to leave a comment here: this book changed my life. Remember the old "Ms." magazine and how they used to do articles about how various women had a "click" moment where their sensibilities about feminism snapped into place? Well, PODKAYNE OF MARS was my click moment. It made me a feminist. The year was 1963, and this was a brand new book by one of my favorite sci fi authors and it was about a girl! A girl who wanted to be a starship captain! I had to wait weeks for the book to come in, and rushed home to read it.Imagine my disappointment! I could literally spend all day just pointing out the bad spots -- the lame characterizations, dull expository, lecturing, etc. But of course the worst thing here is that the book is utterly demeaning to young women. Poddy is a painful charicture of a teenager, with all kinds of agonizingly cute mannerisms. She actually thinks of herself as "an astonished kitten", and never interacts with a man, not even her elderly great uncle without knowingly flirting.I have absolutely nothing against a book about a young woman who wishes to become a mother or raise children -- it's a perfeclty noble ambition. But why set us up for an adventurous tale about a girl starship captain and then have her be this simpering little priss?Obviously Heinlein was bored with Poddy by the end of the first chapter and really wanted to tell the story of her bratty brother. Did some editor press him into writing a story for girls, when he really had no interest? (He never did write female characters particularly well, and we are all aware of his atavistic attitudes towards women in general.)The story is plenty bad in other ways...Read more ›

This was the last of the Heinlein 'juveniles', the only one written with a female point-of-view character, and the only one not subject to the editorial dictates of a certain prudish editor at Scribners, though it still suffered at the hands of the editor at Putnam (more of which later).Podkayne (named after a Martain saint, but just "Poddy" to her friends) and her younger amoral genius-level brother Clark get to take a trip to Earth with a side stop at Venus accompanied only by their retired Martian senator uncle Tom, as their parents are unexpectedly having to deal with three newly decanted babies due to a crèche mix-up. Most of the story is a detailing of the events during their journey on the spaceship and the sights, people, and society of Venus, as carefully recorded in Poddy's diary (with occasional inserts by Clark). This method of telling a story is difficult to do effectively, but for the most part it comes across very well in this book.Poddy is a very likeable, friendly person who is, unfortunately, a little too naïve, a little too cute, a little too much preoccupied with babies, boys, and proving herself to be 'just as good as a man' to be quite believable as a (supposedly) highly intelligent but otherwise normal teen-age girl. Clark, on the other hand, is all too believable as a boy with adult knowledge and a child's 'me' centered view of the universe. Clark is the prime mover of the events, but for the most part he remains offstage, and we only learn about what he has done as filtered by Poddy's perceptions.Read more ›